The engineer–manager pendulum is breaking

There’s a well-known metaphor in engineering leadership written about by Charity Majors about the “pendulum” swinging between being an individual contributor and becoming a manager. For years, it’s been the default framework for explaining that it’s normal to move between the two and build a career that isn’t strictly linear. (I reference this article at least once a week.)

The pendulum was useful. But the world around it has changed.

Over the past several years, the boundary between IC and manager has blurred so much that the old binary model barely fits anymore. Hybrid responsibilities have become the norm. AI has shifted what “technical work” even looks like. And expectations for both leaders and ICs have expanded far beyond what the original metaphor assumed.

Most of us aren’t swinging back and forth between two discrete identities.
We’re living in the middle.

And if we don’t update the model, we’ll keep pretending people are in roles that no longer exist.

The job has changed, but the labels stayed the same

The pendulum has historically consisted of two distinct modes: “hands-on technical work” and “people leadership.” But modern engineering leadership isn’t shaped like that. The work today demands a mix of technical reasoning, systems thinking, product intuition, and human leadership—even when someone’s title suggests otherwise. The old categories don’t describe the actual shape of the job anymore; they describe an era most of us no longer work in.

Senior IC work is already leadership

A Staff or Principal engineer spends a huge portion of their time coordinating across teams, guiding architecture, mentoring others, clarifying product intent, managing ambiguity, and spotting risks before anyone else sees them, which is often why they’re the ones expected to surface those risks in the first place. They may not manage people, but they lead constantly. This means these ICs have much greater influence than before (including at the Senior level!), and it can change the dynamics of who needs to make the final decision.

The Staff role at most companies is fundamentally different from being a Senior engineer (as it should be), and it’s a shift that requires a different identity, mindset, and set of expectations. It’s also why promotions into Staff+ roles often feel like a change in job type, not just job level.

Senior management requires real technical fluency

Meanwhile, engineering managers and directors can’t operate purely as “people managers” anymore. They’re expected to understand complex systems, evaluate tradeoffs, shape technical strategy, interpret data and incidents, and provide clarity about feasibility and priorities. If they don’t have enough technical grounding, the entire system suffers. And as teams scale, the cost of a manager who can’t follow technical reasoning becomes a drag the team has to carry.

AI has compressed the distance between building and leading

Leaders can now validate assumptions, explore design directions, parse logs, and reason about architecture faster than ever. ICs can operate at a higher strategic level without getting bogged down in mechanical work. Both roles have moved toward the center because AI has shifted what “hands-on” even means. You can be technical today without being deep in code every hour of the day.

Remote work turned everyone into alignment owners

Distributed teams require a level of communication, documentation, and cross-functional reasoning that used to live mostly in the manager role. Today, senior ICs routinely lead alignment at scale. Conversely, managers often work farther upstream in technical decision-making than ever before. Remote work didn’t just change how we collaborate—it changed who carries the burden of coordination.

The job simply isn’t binary anymore.